An efficient computation scheme for tracking contaminant concentrations in fluid flows

Abstract

It is often important in engineering applications to predict the concentration of contaminants in a fluid flow. The prediction of the time-dependent behavior of contaminant concentrations in three dimensions is usually expensive, particularly when the arrival time of concentration fronts is important. An efficient numerical solution algorithm for such problems based on the use of discrete fluid particles to represent the contaminants, and a continuum representation of the background fluid is discussed. The C ontainment A tmosphere P rediction (CAP) code has been developed to apply this scheme to the analysis of hydrogen distribution in nuclear reactor containment buildings under postulated degraded-core accident conditions. CAP is described and comparisons between its predictions and experimental results presented.